I, personally, would rather spend my time doing something useful than watch television. I don't even own one. I'm not an elitist, it's just that I'd much rather sculpt or write in my journal or read Proust than sit there passively staring at some phosphorescent screen. If I need a fix of passive audio-visual stimulation, I'll go to catch a Bergman or Truffaut film down at the university. I certainly wouldn't waste my time watching the so-called Learning Channel or, God forbid, any of the mind sewage the major networks pump out...

bondage_donkey:... yeah. I'm not sure how STBs residing on a captive network used only for DNCS communication for VOD requests, SDV stream joins and iPPV orders somehow get involved in a DDOS out in the real world. Even the new DSG set-tops pass their data through VPN tunnels via encrypted downstream and upstream DOCSIS traffic, I'm not seeing this hack... at least not in the system I work for.

FTFA: "But the real enablers of the attack were the operators of more than 27 million computers around the globe who left their equipment wide open to a motivated attacker. Those enablers are not just companies, but regular people with home cable boxes. "There is a big possibility that you are part of the problem without even knowing it," said Paul Vixie, chairman of the Internet Software Consortium, a nonprofit company responsible for the software used by many of the servers that power the Internet.

"The real enablers of rape aren't the rapists, but the companies who make their clothing so skimpy as to be wide open to a motivated attacker. Those enablers are not just companies, but regular people who wear those sexy, skimpy clothes. There is a big possibility that you are part of the problem without even knowing it," said Paul Vixie, some random asshat who sounds like he had one too many drinks and made some bad choices with his brother's underage daughter.